The Best Plumber in Brooklyn
New Yorkers are well-accustomed to seeing celebrities and we have our own unique way of dealing with them: we ignore them. As a rule, our disdain of luminaries is applied only to the living, which only makes sense. So, we don’t expect to see dead celebrities. But the same facelessness that can hide one from the public eye can also hide one from history. That’s what I discovered one evening when I met the best plumber in Brooklyn.
Not long ago, I was sitting on a park bench on the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights enjoying the view of the sun setting over the Manhattan skyline. As I scanned the landscape, I noticed a middle-age man sitting on the next bench who looked strangely familiar. There was something about his aquiline nose and high forehead that made me almost certain I’d seen him before.
And, then it struck me. Continue reading